Gender Ideology and Fertility Strategies in an Ekiti Yoruba Village

This article investigates the influence of gender ideology on number of children wanted, son preference, family-size discussions and decision-making, and use of birth control in a rural Ekiti Yoruba village in southwestern Nigeria. Interview and survey data indicate that attitudes about these matters vary more with age than with sex, suggesting that both women and men subscribe to the prevailing gender ideology of male authority in matters of family size and composition. However, women and men differ about who decides family size, largely because the ideal of fathers' financial support of their children is sometimes belied by practice. The article concludes with a discussion of the strategies that husbands and wives employ to obtain their reproductive goals, and their implications for family planning programs in Nigeria.